Dancing on Air, Onstage and Off

Monette Verona McKay and Preston Warren Dugger III were married Monday. The Rev. J. Loren Russell, a Baptist minister, officiated at the home of the bride’s parents in Flanders, N.J.

The couple, both actors, met in 2011, while performing in ensemble roles in “Memphis: The Musical” at the Shubert Theater on Broadway.

Ms. McKay, 29, will keep her name. Her other Broadway credits include ensemble roles in “Mamma Mia!” in 2008 and 2009, and in “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” which she performed in until January. She is also a painter whose work is on display at Birdland, the New York jazz club, and in the green room for “Motown: The Musical.” She graduated from Wagner College in Staten Island.

She is a daughter of Verona Bassaragh McKay and Patrick S. McKay. The bride’s father is a financial adviser and tax accountant in Flanders. Her mother is a medical aesthetician, performing microderm abrasions, chemical peels and other dermatologic procedures; she also teaches students to perform aesthetic procedures at the Artistic Academy, a beauty school in Morris Plains, N.J.

Mr. Dugger, 33, is an actor in “Motown” at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater on Broadway. He was also a company member of the Dance Theater of Harlem and of Ballet San Jose.

He is the son of Romega Dugger and Preston W. Dugger Jr., both of Bowie, Md. The groom’s mother retired as a secretary in the office of solid waste at the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington. His father is a customer-service associate in the District of Columbia’s water department.

The couple met when she was assigned to be his new dance partner in the cast of “Memphis,” although both remember having exchanged a look the night before they met, when she was in the show’s audience and he was onstage.

In their first meeting, a rehearsal, Mr. Dugger had to throw Ms. McKay into the air in a complicated maneuver that fortunately ended well. “It requires you to trust your partner really quickly,” he said. As they got to know each other, they found that they shared an interest in art by Andy Warhol and the British street artist Banksy, and music that was out of the mainstream.

He was soon in love. “I wasn’t just some random guy trying to put a notch in my belt,” he said. “I was very genuine with her. I was clumsy, and I didn’t know what to say. It was very strange, the first time this has ever happened in my life. All the cool things I used to use with other girls went flying out the window.”

But Ms. McKay was hesitant. “You date other actors,” she said, “but never someone I worked with, because that can get a little tricky, mixing the professional and personal.”

Before two months had passed, Mr. Dugger overcame Ms. McKay’s reluctance to date a colleague, with dinner in a restaurant’s private room that had been strewn with rose petals and that included Champagne served at the stroke of midnight.

“I had never been on a really romantic date like that,” she said. “He’s very charming, very romantic. He’s a gentleman through and through.”